This site is about everything digital, giving an update on new things as I learn

Tag: eCommerce

Just a short post this time, as I just wanted to share my excitement about the likes of Square and Klarna becoming banks (eventually). As an outsider looking in, I can see the rationale for companies like Square and Klarna, payments platforms, for becoming full blowing banking entities:

Logical extension of the payments ecosystem – Given that Square and Klarna already process payment transactions for thousands of merchants and their customers, it means that they’ve got a strong foot in the door with small businesses. It therefore makes total sense to offer new products and services to both merchants and their customers.

Data, data, data – I can imagine that with the amount of transactional data being processed, Square and Klarna no doubt have built up great customer and merchant data profiles, and are now looking to further monetise on this customer understanding. Offering lending products jumps out at me as a key reason for Square and Klarna wanting to become banks. This pattern fits well on the trend involving challenger banks like Monzo and Chime starting out with limited features, but gradually expanding into fully fledged bank accounts.

Hook at point of sale – Being able to engage with both consumers and merchants at the point of sale feels like a pretty strong hook to me! Loved how backend payment platform Adyen recently got valued at $8.3 billion, and it shows you that the financial sector is way off from calming down.

Main learning point: Whilst there are concerns about small businesses being impacted negatively by the likes of Square becoming banks, I’m excited by the ongoing disruption of the financial sector. Recent applications for banking licenses by Square and Klarna are a sign that the Fintech startups and challengers are scaling. As long scaling doesn’t happen at the detriment of the customer – both consumers and merchants – this can only be a good thing!

I recently listened to a podcast which was all about Warby Parker and its makings. After listening to the podcast, I was keen to have a closer look at Warby Parker’s website:

My quick summary of Warby Parker before using it – Warby Parker is disrupting the way in which consumers discover and buy glasses. I expect a product which removes the need for physical opticians.

How does Warby Parker explain itself in the first minute? – Accessing https://www.warbyparker.com/ on desktop, I see a nice horizontal layout, dominated by two hero images. There are two main calls to action. Firstly, “Try frames at home – for free”, which then offers me to either “get started” or “browse frames”. Secondly, “Shop online” which lets me shop for eyeglasses and sunglasses.

Getting started, what’s the process like? – After clicking on “Get started”, I can choose between styles for men and women.

Having selected “Men’s styles”, I’m pleased that there’s an option for me to skip the “What’s your fit?” screen as I’m unsure about the width of my face 🙂

Selecting a shape of frames feels somewhat easier, but it’s good that I can select all three shapes if I wish. Instead, I go for “rectangular”.

The same applies for the next screen, where I can pick colours and I select “Neutral” and “Black” simply because I find it easier to visualise what the frames will look like in these colours.

I decide the skip the step involving different materials to choose from. The icons on this screen do help but I personally would have benefited from seeing some real samples of materials such as acetate and titanium, just to get a better idea.

It’s good that I’m then being asked about my last eye exam. Wondering if and when I’ll be asked for the results from my last eye test in order to determine the strength of the glasses I need.

The next holding screen is useful since up to this point I hadn’t been sure about how Warby Parker’s service works. The explanations are clear and simple, encouraging me to click on the “Cool! Show me my results.” call to action at the bottom of the screen. I now understand that I can upload my prescription at checkout, but I wonder if I need to go to an eye doctor or an optician first in order to get a recent (and more reliable) prescription …

I’m then presented with 15 frames to choose from. From these 15 frames, Warby Parker lets me pick 5 frames to try on at home. I like how I can view the frames in the different colours that I selected as part of step 4 (see above). If I don’t like the frames suggested to me, I can always click “Browse all Home Try-on frames” or “Retake the quiz”.

I like the look of the “Chamberlain” so I select this pair of frames and click on “Try at home for free”.

As soon as I’ve clicked on the “Try at home for free” button a small tile appears which confirms that I’ve added 1 out of 5 frames which I can try at home. I can either decide to find another frame or view my cart.

When I click on “Find another frame” I expected to be taken back to my previous quiz results. Instead, I can now see a larger number of frames, but there’s the option to go back to my original quiz results and matches with my results have been highlighted.

I really like how the signup / login stage has been positioned right at the very end of my journey – i.e. at the checkout stage -and that I can just continue as a new customer.

My Warby Parker experience sadly ends when I realise that Warby Parker doesn’t ship frames to the United Kingdom. No matter how I hard I try, I can only enter a US address and zip code 😦

Did Warby Parker deliver on my expectations? – Yes and no. I felt Warby Parker’s site was great with respect to discovery and customisation, but I do think there’s opportunity to include some explanatory bits about Warby Parker’s process.

When I was looking at Deloitte’s annual “Fast 50” 2015 winners, I saw that Touchnote, was ranked 9th, based on a 2312% growth rate (!). Touchnote was described as a “postcard sending service” on Deloitte’s listing, which made me curious to learn more about how a postcard sending service can enjoy such phenomenal growth. Let’s have a look at the app in more detail:

My quick summary of the app (before using it) – I expect an app which makes it easy for me to create and send postcards.

How does the app explain itself in the first minute – As soon as I open the app, a modal appears with a picture of a smiley couple wearing Santa hats. The description on the modal screen reads “Christmas cards – Turn photos into beautiful Christmas cards.” It’s clear that the app lets me take my pictures and convert them into postcards.

Getting started, what’s the process like – By clicking “next” on the modal screens, I get a good flavour of the different cards and frames I can create through Touchnote. However, once I’ve seen the last modal screen and land on the main screen of the app, I’m not entirely clear about how Touchnote works. For example, I’m not quite clear about how Touchnote’s credit packs work and what the benefit is of buying credits instead of buying per card or set of cards. Also, I’m wondering whether I need to sign in or create a Touchnote account to use the service. However, it’s clear where I need to click to create a (Christmas) card or a framed picture.

After indicating that I’m happy for the app to access the pictures on my phone, the process feels very intuitive and straightforward. For example, changing layouts felt very simple. As a user, the last thing I want to do with an app like this is fiddling endlessly with layouts and customisation.

Again, selecting, rotating images, adding a caption and selecting an address – it all feels very easy and I end up with a postcard that I’m happy with.

I’m now told that I need to buy 1 credit to buy (and send?) the card, but it looks like I need to sign up with Touchnote to be able to do that. Why can’t I use Touchnote as a guest? It would be great if I could sign up at a later stage when I’m clearer about the quality of the service and about how Touchnote works.

Payment through Touchnote feels very easy, even though I would have liked to have know about the price of 1 credit prior to arriving at the payment screen. All in all, a very easy and seamless purchase process, followed by a nice confirmation email in my inbox.

How does the app compare to similar apps? – Out of the similar apps that I looked at, Postdroid felt the least elegant. Apart from struggling to manipulate images, the thing that struck me most is that the first screen on the Postdroid app is a login one, which doesn’t make me feel particularly welcome to say the least. In contrast, creating a postcard through Postino felt just as easy as doing it through Touchnote, the main difference being that Postino lets you choose from a number of borders to add to the picture, so that you don’t have to have to worry about empty spaces or padding.

Did the app deliver on my expectations? – The whole process of creating a postcard through Touchnote felt incredibly easy, and I wondered whether Touchnote are looking to apply this seamless experience to personalising and sending other items such as mugs or plant pots (yes, plant pots). Given how easy the Touchnote app was to use, I was wondering why the app doesn’t work harder on explaining early on how pricing works or why it doesn’t let customers purchase cards as a guest. But yes, all in all, the app definitely did deliver on my expectations.

Last week I wrote about Grabble and reviewing their app spurred me on to look at other apps in the ‘content commerce’ space. In essence, content commerce is about obtaining revenue from your digital content, irrespective of the form the content comes in (e.g. blog, film, music, etc.). These are some of the content commerce examples I looked at:

The Hunt

The Hunt‘s strapline reads “Style & Shopping” and that’s exactly what you get. Very much image driven, the user can search for fashion and styling ideas. I didn’t find the app the easiest to use, and I wasn’t sure about the ‘return of investment’ I was getting on the effort I had to put in to find a piece of clothing ‘similar to this’ (see Fig. 1 below). I can see, however, that The Hunt does help users discovering new fashion items and sharing these with their friends for input.

Gilt

Gilt is a member’s only community which offers products from the world’s biggest fashion and accessory brands with discounts of up to 70 percent. I can imagine that Gilt acts as a trusted style adviser in the eyes of its community members and I can therefore imagine its curated ‘top picks’ section to get a higher clickthrough rates than similar sites (see Fig. 2 below).

Spring

Spring is another good example of an eCommerce site with a strong curated feel about it. Spring offers an Instagram-like photo feed of products to purchase, with a curated community of brands that includes luxury labels and emerging designers. The collections displayed have been curated by influencers and editors (see Fig. 3 below). Spring has no shopping cart. After users have initially filled out credit card and shipping info, they just swipe beneath an item to buy it. And after users like an item, the relevant seller can send them push notifications.

Product Hunt

Product Hunt is one of my favourite places when it comes to finding out about new gadgets and technologies. The combination of a dedicated community curating the products shown based on votes and related conversations between community members works really well. I know that the good people at Product Hunt are looking to expand into non-tech areas, and it will be interesting to see if and when they’ll be able to build up a community around fashion for example.

Fig. 4 – Screenshot of ‘products’ screen on Product Hunt’s iOS app

Mumsnet

If we take the definition of content commerce at its most basic level, then I would say Mumsnet is a great example. Mumsnet is a large community and acts a go-to place for lots of mothers and mothers to be. Below example of a page where users can read trike and ride-on reviews as well as engage in ‘discussions of the day’ is a really good example of how you can combine relevant content with eCommerce (see Fig. 5 below).

“Grabble: Buy Fashion and Shop With Style” is the tagline of the app on the iOS app store. I’m intrigued by the name of this app and its tagline. Is Grabble like Asos or Net A Porter, or is it more like Thread … Grabble is one of the few apps where I really don’t know what to expect. All the more reason to do a review and see what this app is all about:

My quick summary of the app (before using it)? –I expect an app that will help me buy clothes that suit my style and budget. Fashion recommendations might well be the strongest point of this app; using my data and that of users with a similar style to make relevant suggestions.

How does the app explain itself in the first minute? – When I open the app, I am immediately impressed by the great moving images (see Fig. 1 below). This first impression reminds me of the Audioboom app, I like the aspirational people and stylish items of clothing. There are clear calls to action at the bottom of the screen, making it easy for me to get started. But, at this stage I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be signing up to … a personal fashion adviser, a fashion eCommerce app or a mixture of both? I decide to click on the cross in the top right corner of my screen to see what happens.

Getting started, what’s the process like? – This is good. By clicking on the cross, it seems that I don’t have to sign up straight away. Instead, I just need to indicate whether I want to shop for men’s or womenswear. After I click on menswear, I land on a screen which provides me with more clarity about what the app is all about: “your daily feed of great fashion, beauty and homeware. Every day our team of stylists find the best products online.” I now understand that if I sign up to Grabble, I can expect to receive daily alerts about the latest, carefully curated fashion and style tips. When I click on “next” at the bottom of the screen, I see a picture of an old-school gramophone and a green heart which says “Grab it!” (see Fig. 4 below). If I want to ‘grab’ this item, I just need to swipe to the right and I’ll be alerted as soon as the item goes on sale. I can always swipe to the left if an item doesn’t suit my style (see Fig. 5 below). Everything comes together when I land on a screen where I read that I can buy my “favourite Grabs easily and securely. And get free delivery with every order!” (see Fig. 6 below).

How does the app compare to similar apps? – In terms of pure user experience, I feel that only Pinterest comes close. Adding, viewing and ‘visiting’ my pins are all part of one seamless and simple experience (see Fig. 7 below) however, the retailer integration on Grabble feels more seamless and intuitive. By contrast, when I first opened the Nuji app (see Fig. 8 below), which is a close competitor in the UK, I didn’t find the first image particularly welcoming. Better was the simplicity of Fancy (see Fig. 9 below), although this app doesn’t feel half as stylish and inspirational as Grabble and somewhere between the two sits Wanelo (see Fig. 10 below).

Did the app deliver on my expectations? – Yes and no. Let’s start with the ‘no’ part. It took a while for me to understand what the app was about. Initially, I thought I’d be subjected to an experience similar to Thread where I’d have to enter my style preferences, physical attributes, etc. On the contrary, the effort required felt minimal and I got the sense that once I start ‘grabbing’ or buying more items, Grabble’s recommendations will be on the money, especially given the large number of brands – 1,500 – on Grabble’s platform. Once I got that, it felt like the perfect app, but I do believe the app can work harder on making that clearer upfront.

Main learning point: I can now understand why big fashion retailers such as Zara, Uniqlo and Asos are all on Grabble’s platform, as it provides such a seamless integration between product discovery and purchase. Apart from the fact that it took while to understand the app’s main purpose, I really like the way Grabble recommends products within different categories based on the items users either ‘grab’ or ‘throw’.

It’s all about the “sharing economy” these days. Think Uber, Airbnb and JustPark. Sharing is starting to become a ‘thing’ in the finance sector too; TransferWise is a good example in this respect. I recently came across WeSwap, which is a peer-to-peer travel money exchange service founded two years ago. I decided to review the WeSwap app and these are some of my findings:

How did the app come to my attention? – I recently read an article in the Financial Times, titled “Travel money venture cashes in peer-to-peer cash.” WeSwap got quite a lot of coverage in the article and that’s how I found out about it.

My quick summary of the app (before using it)? – Similar to the model behind TransferWise, I believe WeSwap helps people to exchange currencies without having to pay hefty bank fees.

How does the app explain itself in the firs minute? – Before entering the actual WeSwap app, I see a screen which states “WeSwap helps you save on your travel money.” This is followed by the explanation “by swapping your money with other travelers, travelling in the opposite direction (see Fig. 1 below).”

Getting started, what’s the process like (1)? – Despite the app being a bit slow to load, the account creation process felt very intuitive, clean and nicely laid out (see Fig. 2 below). I did feel a little bit of confused as I thought account creation was going to be a 1-step process (see Fig. 3 below). However, after I’d submitted my email and and password, I got a screen which showed a 3-step account creation progress bar at the top (see Fig. 4 below). I then had to give up on the the account creation process, as I was doing this on the go and didn’t have personal ID files that I could upload, nor was I fully clear on why this was necessary to create an account (see Fig. 5 below).

Getting started, what’s the process like (2)? – From the screenshots that I’ve looked at (see Fig. 5), the WeSwap interfaces and interactions feel very clear and intuitive. What I couldn’t test, however, was how self-explanatory the “swaps” and “loads” are. I believe that the ability to explain the currency ‘swaps’ to casual users will be critical to the success and adoption of WeSwap.

How does the app compare to similar apps? – Currencyfair and Kantox offer a service similar to WeSwap. However, they don’t seem to have a mobile app. Transferwise, another WeSwap competitor, do offer a mobile app. The TransferwWise app feels very accessible, and is focused on being easy to use.

Did the app deliver on my expectations? – I feel I can’t really answer this question, having given up during the account creation process. The way the app presents itself in the first few screens feels very intuitive and simple, but I hadn’t expected the sign-up process to feel as onerous as it did. That could just be me and not the app, but it did stop me from using the app on the go.

Fig. 1 – Screenshot of WeSwap opening screen (when using the app for the first time)

How do the likes of eBay, Amazon Handcraft, Notonthehighstreet, Rakuten and Etsy go about supporting the small businesses who sell products through their platforms? What are some of the typical data and customer insights that these sellers benefit from and why? Amazon recently launched its Seller App aiming to “help grow and manage your selling business on Amazon.” I had a quick look at the Amazon Seller App and these are my initial thoughts:

How did the app come to my attention? – Since I’ve started working on online marketplaces I tend to keep an eye out for new technology and tools available to the sellers on these marketplaces.

My quick summary of the app (before using it) – I expect a mobile app, which helps sellers to keep a close eye on their sales figures and manage their orders.

How does the app explain itself in the first minute? – The first screen of the app asks me to select my marketplace (see Fig. 1 below). It doesn’t provide any further context but I presume that if you’re an active seller on Amazon you might not need any further info.

Getting started, what’s the process like? – I’m not a seller on Amazon, but looking at some of the screenshots and the data provided, I can imagine that sellers will find it relatively easy to use the app (see Fig. 2 and 3 below). What I’m curious about though is the data syncing between devices, making sure your sales data is as ‘real-time’ as possible. I also couldn’t get a sense of whether (and how well) the Seller App integrates with Amazon’s Mobile Credit Card Reader.

How does the app compare to similar apps? –The Amazon Seller App feels very similar to the Sell on Etsy app and SellerMobile. For example, the Etsy app enables sellers to manage their open orders and revisit completed ones on the go (see Fig. 4 below). The Etsy app also offers sellers the opportunity to check their Etsy shop and product views, but I’m not sure whether this analytics feature is included in Amazon’s Seller App.

Did the app deliver on my expectations? –Yes, based on what I could tell from the screenshots and app description. The app looks the provide the key stats and insights that marketplace sellers tend to be interested in. What I could not tell from the screenshots is how the app facilitates sellers who sell on multiple marketplaces, for example in the UK and the US. I know this is a reality for lots of small businesses and it would be good to find out how the user interface of the Amazon Seller App accommodates for this use case.

Main learning point: TheAmazon Seller App looks fit for purpose, providing sellers with key sales information that’s visual and easy to manage on the go. Analytics and multiple marketplaces are two areas where I’m not sure how (well) they are covered by this app. However, if you sell products through Amazon and want to keep a close eye on your orders and sales, then this app should give you the key information to help you manage your activities on Amazon’s marketplace.